Beijing furious over Trump’s One China policy posture

Beijing / AFP

Beijing issued its first clear warning on Monday over Donald Trump’s fiery rhetoric, as state media said the Asian giant could back “forces hostile to the US” if the president-elect follows through with threats to drop Washington’s One China policy.
It was the strongest signal yet from Chinese authorities that abandoning the One China policy, which guides relations with self-ruling Taiwan, would upset decades of carefully managed Sino-US relations and end cooperation between the world’s top two economies.
Beijing has not controlled Taiwan for more than 60 years but foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said it considered the island a “core interest” that affected China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The One China policy was the “political bedrock” for relations with the US, he added, and if it was “compromised or disrupted”, sound and steady growth in China-US relations and cooperation in major fields would be “out of the question”, he told reporters.
The comments came in response to Trump’s remarks in an interview on Sunday that he did not see why Washington must “be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade”.
He vehemently defended taking a call earlier this month from Tsai Ing-wen, the democratically elected president of Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a rogue province awaiting unification.
Although the United States is Taiwan’s main ally and arms supplier, Washington has not had official diplomatic relations with Taipei since 1979, when it switched recognition to Beijing.
Trump’s decision to take the call broke with protocol, and seemed to catch China’s Communist Party leadership by surprise.
The official response was initially muted, and state media largely blamed Taiwan for the phone call and advocated a wait-and-see response.
But the remarks on Monday were more pointed, and a commentary in the nationalistic Global Times offered a more menacing warning to Trump, calling him “as ignorant of diplomacy as a child”, in its Chinese-language version.
If the US openly supports Taiwan’s independence and ramps up arms sales to the island, it threatened, China could aid “forces hostile to
the US”.

Taiwan calls on youths to join army as China threat looms 

Taipei / AFP

Taiwan’s defence minister called on youths to join the army on Monday after Chinese military aircraft came near the island over the weekend during a drill for the second time in the past month.
Saturday’s incident saw more than 10 Chinese aircraft pass through the Miyako Strait in Japan’s Okinawa chain as well as the Bashi Channel to the south of Taiwan, according to the defence ministry. Officials gave no further detail on how close the planes had come to the island, but they did not enter Taiwan’s airspace.
It comes as tense cross-strait relations have been further rattled by United States president-elect Donald Trump’s unprecedented phone call with Taiwan’s Beijing-sceptic president Tsai Ing-wen, and his suggestion on Sunday that he could drop Washington’s “one China” policy which guides relations with self-ruling Taiwan. Taiwan’s defence minister Feng Shih-kuan called the timing of China’s air drill a coincidence, but warned the island is still at risk of military threat.
“China’s actions must have political significance,” Feng said on Monday.
The defence ministry does not always make such incidents public, but wanted to raise awareness of “threats” to the island, said Feng.
“We want to let our people know that we still face threats from our enemies,” he said.
Feng used the opportunity to urge youngsters to sign up for Taiwan’s military, which consists of around 200,000 troops, a fraction of China’s 2.3 million-strong army.
“We hope aspiring young people can join the military force under the recruitment system and defend our country,” Feng said.
China poses the main military threat to Taiwan, which Beijing sees as part of its territory to be brought into its fold—by force if necessary.
It has 1,500 missiles aimed at the island, according to Taiwan’s defence ministry.
Taiwan has been struggling to end one-year compulsory conscription and make its military a voluntary service, delaying its target date several times due to insufficient recruitment.
An earlier plan to make the forces voluntary by 2017 was pushed back again in August. Feng said that the defence ministry would halt conscription from 2018.
Saturday’s drill also prompted a spat between Beijing and Tokyo after China’s defence ministry alleged Japanese fighter jets obstructed its aircraft during the excercise, launching “decoy flares.”
Tokyo has denied the accusation.